Description

Finalist for 2016 Indiefab Award in Religion!

Ten engaging interwoven stories about the lives of people who meet weekly at a synagogue to pray. Each story is told from the point of view of a different character and deals with issues like narcissism and love, brokenness and repair. John J. Clayton is an award-winning author and a professor of literature and fiction. Minyan is his ninth work of fiction.

“If I were asked whether there is one single book I would recommend to anyone interested in learning about the world of contemporary American Jews, I would unhesitatingly recommend John J. Clayton’s Minyan.”—Richard L. Rubenstein, President Emeritus, Distinguished Research Professor of Religion, University of Bridgeport

“In this sparkling collection of ten stories, John Clayton has opened a clear-eyed, intimate window into the souls and lives of a small congregation of Jews in Boston, alive to the beauty and messiness of everyday life. While reading these humane, touching stories, I felt as if I’d grown up in the company of this Minyan, knowing their hopes, joys, and disappointments my whole life. In this gift of stories, Clayton affirms my rabbi’s old adage, ‘Jews are really like everybody else, just a little more so.'”—James E. Young, Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies, Director, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

“John J. Clayton has created the perfect hybrid of the short story the novel in Minyan,—a group of 10 interwoven tales of people who work and pray together at a synagogue in Brookline…. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate how the characters in Minyan try to live their faith.”—Tinky Weisblat, Greenfield Recorder, October 28, 2016.

Contents

• • Minyan 1

• • Children of Peace 27

• • O?Malley Recites the Kaddish 53

• • The Grandparent Option 83

• • A Question of Heart 111

• • The Gift 137

• • Cleaning Up a Mess 161

• • Whispers from a Distant Room 191

• • The Embezzler and the Rabbi 213

• • Forgiveness 243